Kickstarter Starts Showing the Cracks in Funded Game Collapse
Two games go down in flames
The apparently utopian idea of crowd funding in the form of Kickstarter has hit what many of us perceived as its greatest hurdle: credibility. What happens when all the funds (and more) requested come in from eager individuals who want to see a game made... but the game never gets made?
The simple answer is that a massive credibility gap opens up and those keen individuals become slightly less eager. The two games in question right now are Shaker "An RPG by Brenda Brathwaite & Tom Hall" and Haunts: The Manse Macabre by Rick Dakan.
Some old hands may recognise the names Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall. As MCV points out, "The project was headed by Loot Drop, a studio that houses John Romero, Brenda Braithwaite and Tom Hall, and kicked off its Kickstarter drive earlier this month."
In this case, the team wanted to raise $1million for game funding.. and couldn't. They list a number of games that didn't' make funding in the commercial road, "We regret to announce that we're adding Shaker: An Old-School RPG to the latter list."
They say, "Ultimately, our pitch just wasn't strong enough to get the traction we felt it needed to thrive. Sure, it may have made it. We could have fought our way to a possibly successful end. In reading your feedback and talking it over internally, however, we decided that it made more sense to kill it and come back with something stronger."
Haunts: The Manse Macabre, however, did get funded but then - as Forbes reports - "wrapped up its Kickstarter drive just over three months ago on July 6th. The turn-based horror strategy game raised $28,739 – nearly $4,000 over its goal of $25,000."
However, "The problem, Dakan says, is that the studio no longer has any programmers.
“Our lead programmer, Jonathan, was always going to move on to something else after a year or so. We had hoped that he would be able to work on the game in his spare time, but now that he’s going back at Google, he has told us that his spare time will be very minimal and not enough to make progress on the game. Our second programmer, Josh, has quit the project entirely to take another job. He does not want to work on the game in his spare time.”
Have you funded any games as part of a crowd? Let us know in the Forum.
The simple answer is that a massive credibility gap opens up and those keen individuals become slightly less eager. The two games in question right now are Shaker "An RPG by Brenda Brathwaite & Tom Hall" and Haunts: The Manse Macabre by Rick Dakan.
Some old hands may recognise the names Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall. As MCV points out, "The project was headed by Loot Drop, a studio that houses John Romero, Brenda Braithwaite and Tom Hall, and kicked off its Kickstarter drive earlier this month."
In this case, the team wanted to raise $1million for game funding.. and couldn't. They list a number of games that didn't' make funding in the commercial road, "We regret to announce that we're adding Shaker: An Old-School RPG to the latter list."
They say, "Ultimately, our pitch just wasn't strong enough to get the traction we felt it needed to thrive. Sure, it may have made it. We could have fought our way to a possibly successful end. In reading your feedback and talking it over internally, however, we decided that it made more sense to kill it and come back with something stronger."
Haunts: The Manse Macabre, however, did get funded but then - as Forbes reports - "wrapped up its Kickstarter drive just over three months ago on July 6th. The turn-based horror strategy game raised $28,739 – nearly $4,000 over its goal of $25,000."
However, "The problem, Dakan says, is that the studio no longer has any programmers.
“Our lead programmer, Jonathan, was always going to move on to something else after a year or so. We had hoped that he would be able to work on the game in his spare time, but now that he’s going back at Google, he has told us that his spare time will be very minimal and not enough to make progress on the game. Our second programmer, Josh, has quit the project entirely to take another job. He does not want to work on the game in his spare time.”
Have you funded any games as part of a crowd? Let us know in the Forum.